BSE made a big play out of “nine out of ten economists” apparently warning against Brexit this week. The figure was based on a self-selecting Ipsos MORI survey of economists from the Royal Economic Society and the Society of Business Economists. But BSE had some fun with the figures…

The survey was sent out to 3,818 economists. Only 639 (or 16.7%) replied, of which 561 said Brexit would be bad for the economy. That’s just 14.7% of the total number of economists contacted. So rather than nine out of ten economists warning against Brexit, it was actually closer one in seven. Not that you’d know that from their cheeky statistics trickery…